improve documentation of unboxed types
Summary
Location of documentation issue: (e.g. the Haddocks of base
, the GHC user's guide)
GHC users guide
Write a brief description of the issue. Hard time figuring out how to use unboxed values
Proposed improvements or changes
Feel free to propose changes, either concrete or abstract.
https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow_exts.html#glasgow-unboxed points to GHC.Prim docs as the detailed documentation of this feature, but 1) the link 404's, and 2) after fixing the link (it has extra text that shouldn't be there), the GHC.Prim docs don't make it clear how to translate unboxed values to and from boxed ones. The answer is that you have to import GHC.Exts. That gives you data constructors like I# which you can use to convert between boxed and unboxed values, by construction or pattern matching. The docs should mention that, maybe with an example.
Environment
- GHC version used (if appropriate): 9.1 docs